Table Rock lake

Diving an Ozark Oasis

By Greg Laslo

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flooded the valley upstream from Table Rock Dam, they submerged the small town of Oasis, Missouri. Like a modern, midwestern Atlantis, the town still sits under about 100 feet (30 m) of water. Advanced divers can float down Main Street to the town's small wooden church, which, although deteriorating after nearly 40 years underwater, offers wreck diving of a different order.

Treasures like Oasis make Table Rock Lake , which is a well-known Midwestern destination for topside water activities , a regional draw for scuba divers, many of whom travel hundreds of miles for open-water training dives for all certification levels. Training and diving in the lake has advantages, instructors say.

"It's got everything you want in a training site , easy access, good visibility, access to depth," says Scott Stidham, an instructor with Scuba Adventures in Kansas City, Missouri. "The bottom contour, the proximity to air [refills], the number of local restaurants and hotels, and bottom composition make it ideal. You can do any kind of freshwater diving in Table Rock you'd want to do," Stidham says.

Table Rock Lake was formed in 1958 when the White River Valley upriver from the new Table Rock Dam was flooded. The dam, built as part of the Flood Waters Control Acts of 1938 and 1941, was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' effort to bring electricity to rural southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. It's one of four dams on the White River; the only one of them in Missouri.

The lake rings the Ozark mountain town (and country-music mecca) of Branson, Missouri. Located 35 miles (56 km) south of Springfield on U.S. Highway 65, Branson is about 250 miles (403 km) from both Kansas City (site of the nearest chamber) and St. Louis. Little Rock, Arkansas, is 170 miles (274 km) to the south.

MIDDLE AMERICA

A group of Kansas City divers arrives late to a small-town motel, one of three near the lake that cater to divers. The travelers' room assignment is taped to the glass front door. Rooms are kept open for after-hour arrivals, a room guarantee that no five-star resort hotel could imagine. Cars with license plates from Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Illinois fill the parking lots, their owners' intentions implied by red-and-white diver-down stickers.

"There are more than 15 shops that use Table Rock regularly for open-water training," says Dick Dalager of the State Park Dive Shop, located in the State Park Marina's building and next counter over from Sailing Charters of the Americas. The dive shop offers air fills and equipment rental, and divers can arrange for a pontoon boat to shuttle them to lesser-dived areas of the lake. "We've got outcroppings that are like caverns, and there is a wall dive at Breezy Point," Dalager says. "We've got eight- to 20-foot (2.5- to 6-m) visibility, depending on the season. Now, in October, the water is in the low 60s F (15-18 C), but it will get up to 80 degrees (27 C) during the heat of summer. At the first thermocline, it'll be about 68 degrees (20 C)."

As Dalager talks, a diver in a blue dry suit carries in his tank for a refill. He's been to the Enchanted Forest, a grove of submerged oak trees in 25 to 40 feet (7.5 to 12 m) of water that requires a boat ride for access.

"The Enchanted Forest is sort of like diving in a kelp forest," Dalager says. "I took a bunch of bass-fishing guides on a dive there, and they were amazed at the number and size of the fish."

Those fish include just about anything to be expected in fresh water: sunfish (both longear and green); game fish, including yellow perch, crappie, and largemouth bass; and big blue-and-green long-pincered crayfish that scurry backwards around the bottom rocks. In early October, divers may even spot a tiny, cold-water jellyfish.

"You can take inexperienced and apprehensive divers to Table Rock and get their minds off the dive by having them play with the fish," Stidham says. "That's much different from the quarries of the Midwest, few of which have any life in them."

LAND OF PLENTY

Unlike the Enchanted forest, much of the 43,000-acre (17,409 ha) lake, with its more than 745 miles (1,200 km) of shoreline, is easily accessed by car. On one particular October day, the air is unusually warm , nearly 80 degrees , and Bill Orr's advanced open water students are sunning themselves between dives on Moonshine Beach, just up the road a piece from Dalager and the marina. Cold-water wet suits lie scattered over blue nylon tarps, abandoned when their occupants traded cold water for warm air.

"The beach has a really gentle slope," says Orr, an instructor with Great American Diving Co. of St. Charles, Missouri. His class will use the beach for the search and recovery portion of the advanced class. "This site is perfect for navigation and search exercises. There's gravel down to about 25 feet (7.5 m), then a ledge. The bottom below that is silt." The class will lift a 14-foot (4 m) jonboat that rests temporarily in about 20 feet of water. "It must get lifted by every class that dives here," Orr says.

The boat is one of the smaller "wrecks" at Table Rock. At the confluence of the main channel and the arm of the lake that reaches toward the State Park Marina, in nearly 90 feet (27 m) of water, rests the Zebulon Pike, a twin-deck paddleboat reminiscent of Mark Twain's Missouri. A 40-foot (12 m) cruiser lies near the dock of the Branson Belle, a modern sight-seeing descendant of the Zebulon Pike.

Across the lake from Orr's divers is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Dewey Short Visitors Center beach. Dewey Short offers the widest variety of diving from shore at the lake. Located between the 242-foot-tall (74 m) Table Rock Dam and the Visitors Center building, water depths vary from 20 feet to more than 180 (55 m), and the bottom is rock and silt. Orr's advanced class dived Dewey Short for their deep dive, dropping just under 61 feet (18.5 m) in the cold autumn water, the day before.

On this day, a class of open water divers has finished their first dive. "Did you see that big catfish?" asks one of the divers. Holding her hands apart like a fisherman describing the one that got away, she says, "It was this big!"

Her instructor, Mike Marriot, has been diving Table Rock Lake since the 1970s. He was happy to camp on trips to dive sites in Missouri and Arkansas during his first years as a diver, but as his diving career begins its third decade, he is less ascetic. idea of roughing it now is no cable," he jokes.

"There is food, lodging, and diving for all tastes and experience levels at Table Rock," Scott Stidham says. Many of the older instructors , or instructors with older students , choose the lake because of its proximity to a city. Motels and Missouri State Park campsites are closer than two miles (3 km) from Dewey Short, and Branson's restaurants are nearby.

After a day of scuba, divers can explore the Visitors Center, the trout hatchery, the state park, or ride the Ducks, amphibious buses that offer guided tours of the Branson area. Boat rentals are available at the State Park Marina, and fishermen may fly-fish for trout in adjoining Lake Taneycomo, in the cold waters of the Table Rock Dam spillway. Nashville-style variety shows are scheduled virtually nonstop in Branson for those so inclined.

Many divers, though, are content to spend their days underwater and their evenings on the hotel balcony. Sated by a good meal, entertained by stories swapped with buddies, and blanketed with the clear, dark Ozark mountain night, Table Rock divers discover they have stumbled across a diving oasis close to home.

RESOURCES

State Park Dive Shop
Branson, MO
(417) 334-3069